There was the camp’s guard tower, a wooden structure about fifty feet tall with a wall of sandbags around the top. It faced north and had an unobstructed view of both the Imjin River and Liberty Bridge.
“There,” Ernie said, pointing.
“Do you see anything?”
“No,” Ernie replied. “But he’s probably there. Sitting low so his head’s not peeking above the wall.”
“If we wait long enough, he’ll stand up,” I said. “Or someone will come out of the command center to relieve him.”
“That could take hours,” Ernie said.
“I’m sure he has a field radio up there or some other way to communicate.”
Just as I’d uttered the words, a tiny red light glimmered through wooden planks.
“He’s there,” Ernie said. “We can’t wait. We have to take him down now and use him to gain access to the command center.”
“Good idea,” I said, “but how?”
“I’ll climb up.”
“He’ll shoot you before you get halfway up the ladder.”
“No he won’t.”
“Why not?”
“He’ll think what all GIs think when they’re pulling guard duty.”
“Which is?”
“That I’m there to relieve him.”
“Earlier than scheduled?”
“Sure. We all grew up watching Walt Disney.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
He looked at me like I was dense. “We keep wishing upon stars, praying for miracles.”
Ernie was halfway up the wooden ladder of the guard tower when a raspy voice whispered down at him. Ernie said something short and guttural in response. I was hidden in the nearest building, within earshot, so if I couldn’t understand what he was saying, the guy at the top probably couldn’t, either. I heard him ask, “What?”
Ernie let out another unintelligible grunt and kept climbing. I expected a shot to ring out, wounding Ernie and sending him on a fatal fall several stories to the ground like in the movies. But much to my surprise, nothing happened. Ernie was right. The guy didn’t believe that an enemy would be so bold as to just climb up to the tower, and though he couldn’t understand anything Ernie was saying, the mind has a tendency to fill in the blanks with what it wants to see and hear. This guy had decided that he was being relieved early, that he’d be able to climb down from that freezing, lonely, uncomfortable tower, return to the warmth of the underground command center, and have a cup of hot coffee with some C-rations out of a can.
Our target at the top of the tower was standing now. His silhouette was clearly outlined by the night sky. I propped the M-16 rifle on the window sill and centered his head in the front sights. If he saw through the act of the good fairy who’d come to relieve him and tried to fire on Ernie, I was fully prepared to blast his cranium into tiny shards of bone. Fortunately for him, and for Ernie, the guy was oblivious. Ernie reached the floor of the tower and, a few seconds later, his silhouette appeared opposite the guard’s. In their close quarters, Ernie used his .45 to good advantage, threatening the guard with it, and a few seconds later waved the captured rifle over his head to signal that he’d taken control of the tower. I ran to the base and waited as the two of them-guard first-climbed down the ladder. When he stood before me, I leveled the M-16 at him. As he turned, I pulled off his helmet and tossed it into the dirt.
Scarcely looking better than he had in the hospital, here was Specialist Four Wilfred R. Fenton, Counter Intelligence Agent, 501st MI Battalion.
“Assume the position,” I told him.
He did, leaning up against the guard tower. Ernie brought out a length of rope he’d found in the command shack and reached for Fenton’s wrists. Faster than I figured he could move, Fenton turned and swung his right fist around in a huge arc. Ernie tried to duck, but the punch caught him at the top of the head, and much to my surprise, Ernie dropped to the ground. Fenton charged me. I could’ve shot him, but if whoever was in the bunker heard it, that might be the end of Miss Kim. Instead, I backed away, and his roundhouse punch landed on my shoulder. This should’ve been ineffective, but pain rang through my left shoulder like a ten-thousand-volt shock of lightning. Then I saw them: brass knuckles in his right palm. Ernie was trying to raise himself to his feet, but before he could, Fenton swung at me again.
I was backing up quickly now, trying to regain my wits from the disorienting anguish emanating from my left shoulder. I lowered the rifle at Fenton. He grinned and kept swiping at me, knowing that I wouldn’t pull the trigger. I backed away again, this time to my right, tracing an arc around the base of the guard tower. I was trying to turn him around and stall. As he continued in pursuit, he dared me, “Shoot! Go ahead, shoot!”
Ernie was up now. But he was still too groggy to raise himself completely. Instead, he knelt in the dirt holding his .45 with both hands. I feinted toward Fenton, and the move startled him just enough for him to stand still for a moment. Ernie fired. Fenton’s chest pushed out as if he’d been stabbed in the back with a lance and continued to explode forward. Above the gore, he gave me the strangest look, grinning as if pleasantly surprised, and then pirouetted in a large, graceful circle, balancing on the toes of his dirty combat boots, and collapsed to the ground.
A bloody mass of flesh had erupted in the center of what should’ve been Fenton’s chest. His carotid artery had stopped beating and his wide, surprised eyes were glassy in death. A wicked-looking pair of homemade brass knuckles lay loose in his fingertips; probably something he’d made in high school metal shop. I ran to Ernie.
“I’m okay,” he said, pushing my hand away, but he clearly wasn’t. I helped him stand, leaning him against the guard tower and making sure he switched on the safety of his .45. Then he threw up. When he finished spitting, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “They must’ve heard that.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
What to do now? Miss Kim was in the command bunker with Captain Blood and perhaps more soldiers, and had been alerted to our presence. Our only option was to talk.
I loosened the sling of the rifle and slipped it over my head. With the M-16 secure against my back, I climbed the ladder of the guard tower. At the top, I knelt before the blinking field radio. I picked up the mic and started punching buttons. Something buzzed. Then a voice yelled, “What the hell just happened?” I paused for a moment, and he screeched again, “What the hell’s going on, Fenton?”
I swallowed to moisten my dry throat and said, “It’s all over, Blood.”
“Who’s this?”
“Who do you think?”
“Sueno. What’d you do with Fenton?”
“We’ve subdued him. Do you have Miss Kim?”
“Of course I do. And if I let her go, I get free passage out of here. No KNPs, understood? You two are going to escort me out.”
“Where are you planning on going? This is South Korea. You’re boxed in.”
“Not completely,” he said.
And then it struck me what he was planning. Korea was a peninsula, bordered by sea on three sides. Its only embarkation points were Kimpo International Airport and the port cities, including Inchon and Mokpo and Pusan. But he knew the Korean authorities would be ready to apprehend him at all of those exits. The only other way out of the country was across the heavily reinforced Demilitarized Zone. It was delusional for Blood to think we could make it across, even if he’d enlisted Commander Ku’s help.
“You get it now, Sueno? That’s why I brought you up here. So you could escort me across Liberty Bridge and up north with your emergency dispatch and Criminal Investigation ID.”
“We’d never make it across,” I said. “We’d be shot dead or blown to pieces by a land mine.”
“Better than rotting in Leavenworth.”
I had to think fast, stall him.
“Look, Blood,” I said, “your situation’s not hopeless. Turn Miss Kim over to us. That’ll show your goodwill. Then hire a Stateside lawyer, keep your mouth shut, and once the JAG people take over the case, cut a deal.”